Is Positive Thinking Blocking Your Blessings?
There's no doubt that positive thinking is a powerful tool that helps us navigate life's obstacles and challenges. It allows us to see the silver lining in tough situations, find the light in a dark tunnel, and attain a mindset of abundance and joy. However, as the Law of Polarity states, every positive has a negative, and positive thinking is no exception. Believe it or not, if we’re not balanced in our way of thinking, positivity can become toxic and used as a way to suppress our emotions and invalidate natural human experiences.
What Is Toxic Positivity?
Toxic positivity is built around the idea that to remain in a positive state we should ignore our negative emotions and experiences, and instead always look on the bright side. While this may seem like a good thing, it can actually be harmful to our mental health and here’s why.
Suppressing our negative emotions or experiences, doesn’t truly allow us to fully process and heal from them.
This can lead to feelings of shame, guilt, and denial. It's also important to recognise that not all situations have a silver lining, and it's perfectly normal and human-like to occasionally feel sad, angry, or frustrated. In fact, you need negative emotions every now and then as a way to decipher what you want from life and what you don’t. By invalidating our emotions, toxic positivity can make you feel like you’re not allowed to feel the way you do.
Here are a few ways toxic positivity can have an impact.
The suppression of negative emotions
Think of the term ‘negative’ loosely here, because although it is a negative emotion, the word ‘negative’ when used to describe an emotion almost makes it sound like it’s bad to feel that way, and that is not the case. What makes it a negative emotion is because of the way it makes you feel. The most important thing to know is when this feeling arises, identify it, and then accept it. By doing this will help you to process the emotion and start to heal from it.
Denial/Masking your problems
Toxic positivity can bring about a sense of denial and lead to ignoring problems that need addressing in your life. For example, you may feel compelled to stay in an unhealthy relationship, believing that if you think positively enough, it will eventually get better, when the reality is it's getting much worse.
As much as I believe in dreaming big, some circumstances require a dose of self-awareness. By this I mean knowing how and when to look at a situation with honest eyes and decide if it's really right for you or if you are destined for something better.
Is there something or someone in your life where you feel like you're constantly giving, putting in effort, hard work, energy, and time, but only getting paid back in crumbs? It might be time to re-evaluate and ask yourself how much more you are willing to give.
Speaking from my own experience, if I had let positive thinking cloud my judgement, I would probably still be a fashion stylist waiting for my 'big break'. Although I had achieved a lot in my styling career, it got to a point where I had to assess what I was really getting back from the industry and whether there was something else I should be doing. Fortunately, I decided to create my own beauty products and started my own beauty brand, which brought me more money, more recognition, and most importantly, more fulfilment within the first three years than I had in the eight years I was styling.
Don't let positive thinking distract you from a missed opportunity.
Instead, be positive that even when you have to make difficult decisions or end a situation you thought would last forever, you will be guided in the right direction.
Healthy Positivity
Instead of suppressing your emotions and ignoring life’s problems you can open yourself to more opportunity and receive your blessings by embracing a healthy, balanced way of positive thinking. When you practice healthy positivity you give yourself permission to feel a range of emotions, both positive and negative. You start to realise it’s possible to find joy and hope in the midst of challenging situations, and at the same time can acknowledge and validate your negative emotions.
How To Practice Healthy Positivity
1. Know it’s okay not to be okay
It's important to acknowledge and validate your emotions, both positive and negative. Don't suppress your negative emotions or feel guilty for feeling the way you do. Instead, allow yourself to fully process and heal from your experiences. When we acknowledge our emotions, we can learn from them and grow.
2. Practice Gratitude
Take time each day to reflect on the things you're grateful for, no matter how small they may be. By focusing on what we have, we can cultivate a positive mindset and find happiness in our everyday lives.
3. Focus on Solutions
Instead of ignoring challenges and masking them with positive affirmations, focus on solutions. Think about what you can do to improve your situation, what needs to change, and how you can take action. When you focus on finding a solution you find other ways to overcome challenges and open yourself to even more opportunities.
